Name: Where is Maduro now and what will happen to him? | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-01-03T16:58:17.000Z
Duration: 6 min 42 s
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The US has confirmed that its military has carried out a large scale operation in Venezuela.

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President Donald Trump said Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was captured and flown out of the country by U.S.

The U.S. attorney General says Maduro and his wife will now face criminal charges in an American court.

The announcement of president's removal came just hours after reports of explosions and in the Venezuelan capital.

Let's go straight to our correspondent Benjamin Alvarez GROUPER In Washington, D.C.

benjamin, a lot of developments even before Donald Trump's press conference in around an hour from now.

President Trump gave a longer interview on Fox News.

He suggested that his administration would continue targeting Venezuelan government officials if they side with with Nicolas Maduro.

He said, and I quote, if they stay loyal, the future is really bad for them.

I'd say most of them have converted because what many are looking at now is not only how the political leadership under Nicolas Maduro will look like and will react, but

Several top Venezuelan officials of course, criticized the US Action on Venezuelan state television.

They criticized and said this is outrageous.

But coming back on what President Trump said, he said that he and his team actually watched this raid that happened around 2am on Saturday on video feeds as it went down.

He also said that Maduro wanted to negotiate in these final days before this US Forces captured him.

So that's what President Trump is saying ahead of this expected press conference in Mar a Lago in an hour from now.

So already talking to US Media about this operation, there's been, of course, a lot of expectation that something like this would happen.

But we will still need to find out more about these details, exactly how this operation unfolded.

I mean, what do we know about the US Military operation that seized Maduro and his wife?

So there's still some media reports, we're referring to ABC's reporting that there was a special operation detachment, the US Army's Delta Force that carried out this capture after the CIA identified his precise location.

So this of course happens over the couple of days to know exactly what happened.

There are also reports that it actually was a source within the CIA giving them this information.

We know that the US has been reaching out to military leadership, to soldiers also to get this information.

And of course, these sources saying that Trump already gave the green light to capture Nicolas Maduro days ago, troops were ready to strike.

But that's also something that President Trump said in this interview with Fox News, saying that the weather was not great.

They were waiting still for some clouds to disappear to actually give the green light that US President Trump and his team followed live.

But we need to know exactly how that unfolded, how that happened, and

also what happens now actually with with Nicolas Maduro.

This is very much a developing story, Benjamin, but

at this hour, where what do we know about where Maduro is now and what will happen to him?

The information was also given out by US President Trump.

He said that Maduro and his wife, who was also captured, have been taken to the USS Iwo Jima, one of the US Warships that have been sent deployed to the Caribbean.

And what will happen now is that they will be indicted.

They have been indicted in the Southern District of New York.

Only hours after President Trump announced this capture, he's facing several charges.

He is facing charges of narco terrorism, conspiracy of cocaine importation, conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and

also conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the US So we know that Nicolas Maduro will face justice here in the United States.

And how have lawmakers in the US Reacted to this?

A couple of Republican lawmakers who represent districts in southern Florida with a large Venezuelan American community are celebrating this capture, this decisive action, as they call it in the hemisphere.

not just Democrats, are criticizing the lack of congressional authorization, criticizing that the White House acted without the green light from Congress, similar to the criticism we've heard following the attacks on the Iranian nuclear facilities, also in Nigeria.

So we will probably hear more from Capitol Hill in the next couple of days.

And many also pointing out to the fact that you can criticize Nicolas Maduro, can state that he stole the last election, that he is an authoritarian leader, while at the same time criticizing US Military intervention in a region marked that has a history of US Military intervention.

And that has been also met with mixed reactions from leaders in Latin America, some like Javier Milei in Argentina, celebrating this, but

others as the Colombian president Gustavo Petro, the Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, criticizing this step by the United States because they said this is not just about Venezuela, this is not just about Latin America.

It shows that the US can actually send in troops or attack a government building in the capital of another country and basically take their leader out.

So this will have major implications not just for Venezuela or for the broader Latin American region.

DW's Benjamin Alvarez Gruber reporting from Washington, D.C. thank you, Benjamin.

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Where is Maduro now and what will happen to him? | DW News

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